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« 015 ⇢ EVENT015.EXE »

Who: CERES, you, and your little ~~dog~~ CYbuddy too!
When: OOC: 6/11 to 6/17th | IC: 1/18 to 1/21
Where: The Greater Cerealia Area/ViViD Shenanigans
What: Event log
Rating/Warning: PG-13/R for possible violence! Let us know if the log needs to be locked or if any issues pop up, thanks!

//event014.EXE

Perhaps it's easy to take the accommodations of Cerealia for granted, even for those who come from worlds that are considerably less technological in nature. Aside from that one nasty hiccup on Halloween, everything moves smoothly in terms of everyday appliances. One can come to take the soft glow of LED lights and hum of machines for granted if you've been in the colony long enough. The metro runs on a regular schedule and you'll very rarely find yourself late for appointments. Schedules run on a universal clock and appliances for your every need and desire can be conveniently supplied by CERES. Life is good. Really.

Yet with the rocky transition to the new CEO, it would appear as though the colony is experiencing some minor… glitches? Well, surely it's nothing to worry about. Nothing can be as bad as the fiascos that residents found themselves dealing with under the old management. Continue on with your day, it's fine. An announcement made by Mosley, who you may recognize as the secretary of the new CEO, will echo the same sentiments with a broadcast from your CereVice:

“Good day, residents. This is Mosley. Please pardon any minor hiccups in your commute or quaint mundane activities today. In accordance with the transition, we are also doing some pre-emptive spring cleaning, I suppose you could say. A few bugs were found crawling where they shouldn't in the city's infrastructure. Isn't that positively horrific? They really let this place fall apart. You needn't worry, in a few days everything will be as pristine as it should be. Think of this as a cleansing for all of us.

Goodbye."

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ 1000 ] The “cleansing" doesn't begin too strangely. No, instead it starts with some minor inconveniences. After Mosley's broadcast, anything running on electricity seems to be… mildly on the fritz. Characters will find their home appliances suddenly rebelling just enough to be troublesome. Anything that uses electricity within the bounds of the colony will start suffering from some small malfunctions. (Do we have any cyborgs in the crowd tonight?) Toasters burning your breakfast and shooting the crispy things at you. Televisions suddenly exploding in a haze of smoke before working perfectly fine a moment later. Hair dryers suddenly running a little too hot and whoops, your hair's on fire… Well, this is all still just a small issue. Probably. Here's hoping the fire extinguisher doesn't run on electricity too?

PHASE II

[ 1200 ] It's only glitches for a day or so, but by noon the next day, things get a little weird. We interrupt your regularly scheduled routine to bring you this important message: Welcome to ViViD. … Wait, what? Yeah, sorry about that. Whether you wanted to or not, you've found yourself in the virtual simulator… except it doesn't seem very… virtual anymore, no. The monsters look a bit meaner, and they seem to be after you in particular. You might suddenly be glitched into a dead end, or a level that actually doesn't seem to be beatable at all, with people you've never seen before as your party members. Endless mazes! Boss battles with a wooden sword! Dungeons with no walkthroughs! When you finally make it to the end, you might even find a giant wall blocking your way, or a moat where there was once a path. Now that's troublesome.

And make sure you don't get hurt by any of those monsters. Not like it matters, it's just HP, right? Wrong. Rather, it'll actually hurt quite a bit, just as if you were injured in real life.

If you're lucky, you'll find yourself glitched back out maybe half an hour later -- your wounds still fresh from the experience and still bleeding. Just don't die. You don't want to see what will happen if you die.

PHASE III

[ 1800 ] It's the day after, and you've survived your unfortunate ViViD runs (though there's no promise that you won't end up there yet again). But for now, you've finished your work day without too many electrical object malfunctions, and you're on your way home. Normally the transit system is so very reliable. From district to district, the metro is your only way of travel and today? Today it's stopping with an ugly screech. Hopefully you don't need to be anywhere because it's safe to say that you're not getting off this ride any time soon. The lights aren't only flickering anymore, they're completely out. The darkness settles in uncomfortably as you're only left with the other people who were making the same trip. A second later, things start to get weird. Cold breath down your neck. The scratch of something sharp and angry against the outside of the cabin. Seconds pass in silence, the presence of something outside growing more and more frightening. If you hold your breath and stay very still, you might make it out just fine. That is until a forceful SLAM sounds behind you and there's something against your window. At least you know what's been making all that noise.

Of course, should you pry open the doors, there's nobody there, but… you couldn't have been imagining that, right?

Looks like the entire city's blacked out… and without the hum of technology and warmth of the advanced lighting system, some ghosts have come out to play. But they can only be seen from the corner of your eye, a glimpse, a breath, a nondescript whisper on the air and then they're gone. Who knows what they want from you…? Either way, they're not saying, staying just out of reach and mostly out of sight… but always there, watching and waiting.

PHASE IV

[ 0000 ] Here you are, finally: day 4. You made your way through the dark, avoided the things that go bump in the night and found your apartment. Your pants are gone, your door is locked, and you've managed to stumble right into your bed/nest/cocoon/what-have-you. Your unbearably long day is finally, finally about to come to a close but then something glitches, worse than before. Suddenly you're not all cozy in your bed, but rather suspended in an unidentifiable space. In this darkness, there is screaming and only screaming. You try to move your limbs, use your voice -- and there is nothing. Rather, you can only look on as the space shifts and you see two figures appearing in the darkness, glowing in the same digital blue that lights up the rest of the colony. As you get closer, the screaming grows louder -- a woman's screams, you can hear now. It sounds garbled, like broken pieces of sound bytes. She's being strangled, you can see now. The other figure strangling her is a robot, metallic and ruthless. He turns to see you and his eyes glow with the same blue shine. As the woman -- LILITH, for those who have seen her or heard her voice may recognize -- finally begins to lose her strength to scream, the robot's mouth slowly spreads into a smile as he maintains eye contact, cold and yet somehow pleased.

In the next second, you have been returned to your body, echoes of screaming your only lullaby. Sleep doesn't seem as likely anymore, does it?

BONUS

[ whyo'clock ] If at all possible, the darkness just got darker. How, you might ask? Well, it seems like someone just put a bag over your head! That's a little inconvenient, but it looks like you're suffering from an old school kidnapping at some point through these couple of days, complete with your assailants pushing you around asking, “Where the hell is the money?!" As they shove you into their shady kidnapper van, you can hear a certain song playing which is… a bit too on the nose for this situation. As the wheels of the vehicle stop and you're pushed out, the bag comes off and you're facing down your friendly neighborhood debt collector. He's slow to get his words out but they are very menacing indeed, something about threatening your family and sleeping with the alien fishes in the park. When you protest, insisting that you don't owe them any money, they pull out a CereVice and show your bank account, which does indeed seem to be approximately 50 million credits in debt.

They'll do this even if you're not in debt at all, and, in fact, it is impossible for you to be in debt, as CERES doesn't loan money to you people. Looks like the glitching did a number on your bank account though, and the numbers don't lie.

Looks like you're out of luck, friend. Why not have a friendly chat with the other half a dozen people who have been bagged and kidnapped as well? There's even a small table with snacks as you wait. Wait for what, they haven't exactly said yet. Maybe you should just leave through the window.

PENALTY

[ xxxx ] Should you be unlucky enough to die in ViViD while it is glitching and injuries are being sustained, you will find yourself in a penalty game. Even more than usual penalty games, this one is increasingly unnerving. There is nothing but a dark room, a single light hovering over two masks on a table. One might recognize them as the masks of comedy and tragedy. In front of the player, red words slowly illuminate the room. Pick one. Well, that's an easy penalty game, isn't it?

Yet as you reach for one, the masks will suddenly turn into the faces of the two most important people to you. Their voices whisper, growing distressed as time goes on, “Pick me, pick me, pick me." The red words turn into a countdown if you take too long -- your hand forcibly moved to pick one mask or the other if the timer runs out. Yet once you put on the mask, you will see the person who was not picked, suddenly and brutally murdered right before your eyes by a shadowy figure, wearing the mask you chose.

With that, you will return to the colony, good as new. Though on occasion, you may see the person whose mask was not picked in the corner of your eye, dressed in black and wearing the very same mask of tragedy.

[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with sensitive or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to Cerealia's June event! Please visit the OOC information here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. This event will last from June 11th to June 17th, or IC 1/18 to 1/21. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here. Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

phase i ( closed to simon )

[ Nothing says good morning like your hairdryer exploding while you're using it! The tips of her hair have been burnt, and that's just a sign of what's to come.

Athena can be found angrily making breakfast (she's gotten slightly better at cooking!), her hair still down and very frizzy. It's not her fault she can't dry her hair and tie it up! It doesn't seem like she's going to be able to cool her head off while cooking, though. When she puts the pan on the stove, the metal starts to melt and all she's left with is the handle.

That's… definitely not right. ]

Si- Simon! The thing! [ Athena, use your words??? ] The stove's broken! [ And she didn't even bother to turn it off. ]

Hurry up and fix it, slowpoke!

[ That was a pretty rude interjection by Widget, and Athena immediately shushes him. Wow??? She didn't even think that.

It looks like technology isn't on Athena's side today.]

phase ii ( ota )

[ After the surprise upload into ViViD, Athena's clothes change into something like this! And it seems that she's been uploaded to a different game she's used to, too. The ground's filled with squares. What's up with that? The only good thing (so far) about what's happening is that the monsters are squares away from her. ]

What happened to my gauntlets?! Inventory, inventory— [ She goes through her items, and most of her rare ones have disappeared, too. The only items she has in her inventory are a couple of potions, a low-level staff, and a stepladder??? ] They're not here!

[ She can complain all she likes, but it looks like she's been reclassed as a white mage. At least it looks like she can cast healing magic, and she isn't alone. After all, it seems that she can't exactly make a move until the first player (that's you) does.

A tactical turn-based fight, anyone? ]

phase iii ( ota )

[ The blackout is scary enough as it is, but when you suddenly feel like you're being watched and followed, things just take a turn for the worst. You might be walking down the residential district, trying to talk yourself out of being scared. Ghosts aren't real. They're just made of code, just like you.

You hear footsteps, though… you start walking briskly to get to the train station, or to your apartment. (Of course, where else would you go?) But the footsteps get louder as you move faster. It's driving you crazy, and you can't take it anymore. Hoping to lose whoever (or whatever) is chasing you, you open one of the nearby doors and hide behind it. You're indoors now, so you should be safe, right?

Whack!

You either fall to the floor, grab the arm of your assailant, or (insert your action of choice here). Either way, it's just Athena, holding a broom, ready to strike. And at least her necklace is lit up that there's a source of light. It's creepy, though. ]

[ATHENA... ATHENA??

Kaoru actually does end up holding her arm instead of falling uselessly to the floor in a dramatic faint, and though the grip is exceptionally weak, that sure was a fast strike... Of course, as soon as Athena actually registers as a familiar face, that hand drops away completely. The opposite one rises, gently resting over Kaoru's heart in a "holy shit I almost died" gesture.]

Ah—! It's only you... I was afraid that you were something dangerous.

[Though that broom is quite menacing and all.]

Kaoru—

[ Please give her a moment to catch her breath. She definitely wasn't ready to hit somebody and possibly kill them (how can you kill someone with a broom?), but she felt like she had to do it since she was so scared. All she wanted was to look for where the generator could be in her building, and grabbed the nearest thing she could when she heard the back door suddenly open. ]

Oh my gosh. [ With another loud sigh, she lowers her arm, letting the broom's head touch the floor. Her free hand is on her chest, feeling her absolutely fast heartbeat. ] I thought you were a burglar.

[TWO SCARED NERDS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE except Kaoru is only pretending to be scared. Still definitely a nerd, though.]

Oh—! I apologize... I didn't want to give away my location, in case anything unsavory was waiting in here.

[As it turns out, the only unsavory thing had been Athena with a broom, which is definitely bearable.]

What a frightening place, when the lights aren't working...

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